YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Yglesias

lines on the record: 73
first: 2020-09-09
most recent: 2020-09-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Important thing I learned from my mother is well, like personally or intellectually. You know, so I am not a visual person, but she was. And she really helped me. I am always reminded by her emphasis on that and how much it actually matters, like what things look like and how the visual design is and that that's not a superficial question that our communications with one another, not exclusively. I mean, we have podcasts, but so much of what we do comes through our eyes, right? And that impacts the message in a profound and real way. And you shouldn't think of it as just a sort of a distorting feel that that's actually what we're doing when we write something is we're creating images that other people look at.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something happened that was called deregulation and it was bad. And that's just like not true. I mean, essentially, this is not true that it was bad. It's like, what is deregulation, right? It's like a harder question than I think most people appreciate. And that's something I definitely learned from him.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learn a lot of stuff from Paul. You know, I mean, you learned specific things about certificate of need rules for hospitals. But we always in my family, a lot of economists, he and his brother Andy and my grandfather Jules are all economists, PhD people. I was always interested in the subject to ask questions at family discussions. You know, his real sort of specialty is in regulatory type issues. And I came to appreciate from things he said just exactly how complicated these questions are of like, what should we do with utility type infrastructure, with these regulated type industries that so many people I know fall back on very hazy, like big picture ideological things, like they heard.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The blogs of famous people, or the blogs that had big brands behind them, or like the New York Times would own blogging or something. Whereas what was special about that blog moment in its first decade was the extent to which people who we didn't know would just kind of write stuff and become influential.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think we blame Facebook and Twitter conventionally for it. But I don't think that it's necessarily just about the technological modes. Part of why blogging was such an interesting moment was that it introduced a genuine disruption into the ecosystem, right? And that people who early on were not affiliated with important institutions or necessarily well known by kind of colonizing the open space became big deal in our own little sort of niches. So Twitter has had some of that impact, right? They're smart, good people who've come to public attention through their ability to tweet, which is good, right? That's like a sort of strong thing. But I don't think if you brought blogging back, it wouldn't be blogging in that sense, right? Like people would want to read.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, you know, it's so easy when you do your job to get mad at your managers and to then make the subsequent turn to like all these people of no fucking idea what they're doing. But it turns out like it is challenging to manage. It involves real skills. It stressed me out. I don't think I did a great job of it. And you get a good appreciation for the idea that even though it might be hard to measure or to see externally, that there is real skill being deployed in mental management and that the sort of meta-management skill, right, that must be, I mean, I didn't reach this level, but the managers who have to pick the other managers, they are doing something that must be, I think, really hard to even conceptualize, but must have incredible influence on the success of really big organizations.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like really about words and how they work and how to think about things and how to draw distinctions and how to parachute in to conversations that you don't know anything about and still make some kind of useful contribution to them. You can always like read a textbook about something else, learn something, and you would never want to make, you know, economics is obviously an important subject and economists know a lot of good and useful things. In academia, you are rewarded for pushing the frontiers, right? For having the edgiest idea out there. But you don't really want to base policy recommendations on something like that, right? Like one promising line of research that some hotshots have two new papers on is not like what you want to bet the future on. So to talk about policy, I think you want to know the basics. The basics are relatively easy to learn.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I definitely agree with that characterization. I think it is not a conscious plan of attack. I majored in philosophy for very naive reasons. Like I enjoyed the intro class and my TA was flattering and encouraged me to pursue it as a major. But I do think it's a good, to the extent that people want to be like writers about things. I think it's a pretty good training. I mean, I did a panel discussion at American Philosophical Association one time with Andrew Sullivan and with another writer. And we were all like old philosophy majors and we were talking about this. And it's a good background because it's”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of the apparatus of NGDP targeting, right? Like that we should have a futures market, that we should be paying attention to what this is, that we should be trying to get the newspapers to talk about nominal GDP, I think has all been validated by this experience. And it all got very in vogue as a discussion topic because of the Great Recession 2009 crash. But that was a very, from a macroeconomic perspective, I think that was a very conventional kind of situation, whereas this pandemic is a little bit weird, but the strength of nominal targeting is that it can help you think about the demand side aspect of real shocks in a clearer way.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think hitting a strict target might be unworkable, but it's also shown the value of the nominal GDP targeting framework because we are otherwise finding ourselves spending a lot of time quibbling about how to understand inflation adjustment in a strange period of trajectory, right? So it's like if college wants to charge you full tuition, but they're only giving you online courses. Like, I think probably the right thing to say about that is that that's massive inflation. But you really can't redo how the CPI works in real time and then hit a CPI target. I do think you might have to say faced with a big shock, like, all right, we're settling for less, something like that.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, yes. And, you know, so like what can we do about that? I don't know. I mean, I think David Schleicher says we should concentrate more power in governor's hands because people do know who the governor is and pay attention and bad governors tend to get replaced. So that has some merits to it. I mean, I have. It gives me pause on some level, but I guess if I had to pick, that would be my solution that you have to strengthen the decentralized institutions of American government by centralizing them”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, smarter, harder working people in state and local governments. You know, for local government, I think a lot of this probably has to do with cleaning up some of the muck. Like there's like too many different local government institutions. People don't know who they are or who does what, things like that, and trying to get a sort of, Blennin said, better fewer, but better, which I think you could accomplish a lot with in local governments in the United States. State government is interesting, right? We have a big problem where the media like people who follow politics don't get at all emotionally or intellectually invested in what's happening in Indiana, even though state government just carries an incredible amount of the load, right? All the first order service delivery is done there, but it's very, it's not just low prestige. It's like almost people don't pay attention to it at all.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In ways that a lot of people I know are a little bit in denial about, even though the facts are staring you right in the face. Like, why are there Republican governors in Maryland and Massachusetts and Vermont, right? Why is Andrew Cuomo so popular, even though people on the left complain about him constantly? And it's because people don't want to put left-wing activists in charge of the country Democrats, I think will probably beat Trump because people don't think that's what electing Biden would accomplish. But, you know, it's out there. And it's like, I think not a new fact in American politics, but an enduring truth.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think there's sort of two versions of it, right? I mean, one is that polarization has created a situation in which there's a lot of loyalty, right? If you are broadly speaking in agreement with the ideas of the Republican Party, you are now highly motivated and highly incentivized to back the leader, right? You can imagine like a different kind of political system where you would say, okay, we're going to get rid of this guy. We're going to put somebody else up who's going to stand for the same sort of general values but have a different approach. In America, you can't do that. The other thing is that, you know, progressive politics in the United States is very, I don't want to say it's very unpopular because it was very unpopular. It wouldn't win anywhere or win ever. But the public has serious doubts about putting the left in power in places.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think the configuration would involve something like a very unpopular Republican administration being replaced with a very left-wing Democratic president who for the demographic balance reasons in Congress doesn't have majority support in the Senate, right? And who then faces a lot of pressure from his supporters to sort of govern an extra constitutional ways. And then conversely, a lot of elite actors in the business community, in law enforcement, in the military, are very motivated to resist that president's factors. I think it's the kind of thing we've seen in Latin American presidential type systems and that could happen here very plausibly. That's not Joe Biden, right? But the Democratic primary could have gone in different kinds of ways eight, 12 years in the future. You might have a different outcome in this sort of situation.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That when things break down, you come out on the other side with something better rather than with something worse. And my main aspiration in writing that essay is to try to get people, American people, to be a little less mad at each other and to have a little bit more recognition of the extent to which there are structural issues in our governance that is making it hard for us to proceed and that it's not all, oh my God, what the hell is wrong with those people? Because, you know, if problems arise, if something goes badly wrong, I think you want to say what they did after the Articles of Confederation, which is like, we need to change the rules here. We need to change the system. We need to kill our political opponents.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know so, I want to say my forecast there was not that the United States of America will cease to be democratically governed country in the long run, but that the United States is due for a constitutional rupture, right? I mean, we've seen in French history and a number of other countries, you know, over the years that they continue to be democracies or democracy is restored, but you have breaks in the system, right? You have a moment where there's a rewrite of things. And even in the United States, of course, our famous moments in history now are the founding fathers kind of calling back seas on the Articles of Confederation or the country completely falling apart after Abraham Lincoln was elected and you come out on the other side of it and we now call those people like the heroes of our historical epic. And it's how you have a successful country over the long term is.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In any way related to that. And you have just very white Democratic parties in those cities. And I don't think it is helpful to managing racial tensions”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very mysterious. I don't know either of those cities well. I think it must have something to do with the fact that those are the whitest of the major cities in America and that they don't have the, I saw a lot of people remarking on at the Democratic Convention. They say, oh, you know, they put all these African American mayors up there instead of the activists who are yelling at the mayors. And I was thinking, well, yeah, of course. Like you put up responsible, accountable elected officials who have to manage the various considerations that are up there, not activists yelling in the streets. And I feel like Seattle and Portland don't have the kind of political institutions and political stakeholders who can say no, like this is not helping. Like I agree that there's a problem here and I want to work on it. But the specific thing that you guys are doing right now in the streets is not.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would I short? I think definitely San Francisco, which is not just taking this kind of COVID hit, but I think had a real New York, there's like a lot of different things happening in New York. There's a lot of different foundations that economic cluster there. And there's a real proved an ability to lose certain things and gain other kinds of things. The attitude between people in San Francisco and the technology industry is really toxic and poisonous in a way that would give me serious pause about the city's future. You could actually imagine civic leaders there thinking that they welcome the departure of that entire ecosystem, which is really dangerous for them. I mean, it's true that there have been problems associated with the growth of tech in San Francisco, but the number of people there, like serious, well-informed people.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relative to market opinion, huh? Huh, huh? I mean, you know, the future for Austin is very bright, but I think market opinion already knows that. You know, maybe Nashville, maybe San Antonio, Minneapolis. I'm going to say Minneapolis, actually, because right now people are getting very low on Minneapolis because of their sort of looting problems. But the fundamentals there are very strong.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably more of a reset to even more of a sort of youth-oriented non-family type place. I've been sort of going back to New York sporadically for years. And I've been struck that it's become a lot more sort of family friendly than I remember it from growing up there. And I think there's a pretty good chance that COVID pushes it back toward more of that 90s equilibrium.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Affecting cities that the kind of municipal budget stakeholders get more involved in the fact that a city like New York actually has the ability to increase and enhance its tax base anytime they want to by making it easier to do market rate building, that constituency, even though there's a robust group of people who would like their salaries and their pensions to be paid, have not really been mobilized on behalf of that cause. And so we'll see, right? I mean, I don't want to go too into this like, you know, it's a crisis, but it's also an opportunity type paradigm. But places prove themselves when they are hit with problems, right? It forces you to either try to address your issues in order to survive or get much, much worse. So I think we're going to see a bit of a turning point.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think you've seen in some ways the biggest YMD political success in Oregon rather than in the Bay Area. And the people who work on that there, they all say to me that the fact that the prices are not as high as they are in the Bay Area is helpful to them, that it becomes more comprehensible to people why new construction, new market rate construction improves the market because it's not so mind-bogglingly out of reach for normal people. It's like, okay, this nice new house might just be better than the house that I'm in. And I could move into it. So I have a kind of a case for new construction. So I think that unless we see cities unraveling, right, that having a somewhat of a decline in the incredible pressure on prices in the Bay Area could be constructive. Also, there's at least some chance that with fiscal profits.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. I just like, I really hesitate to make sports predictions. You know, I think it's like having incredible amounts of like self-confidence with your offense. I mean, we were talking about Gilbert Arenaus and we pioneered the really far long range three. And there were all kinds of problems with him, right? But it was that kind of spirit of like, I in fact can hit this shot. So I'm going to go take it, you know, like knowing that, right? And being assertive, you know, I think has proven its value in the NBA over the past 10, 15 type years. And with what seems to me to be a slipping level of defensive focus inside the bubble, it's like even more just like pull the trigger.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are we learning about the NBA bubble? That is an excellent question. I think we're learning that there is stuff going on off the court that is impacting what we see on the court in a more clear way than we necessarily knew. Like the games have been more different, like the quality of the defense has been lower. Something is off, right? And I think it stems from people's routines being disrupted. I mean, I don't think we know exactly what it is that's going on in there. But there's something more to the game than what's happening within the kind of four lines of the court.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How would I redesign Twitter? They have to make blocking tools, I think, much more prominent, right? That like it's really important on Twitter, I think, to be constantly editing your experience. And they don't present it that way for I'm sure various reasons. But like one thing I always want to do is like sometimes you see a post and like it's terrible and you should be able to just like mass block like everybody who gave it a little heart because there's too much, I don't know, just like trolling, you know, like Twitter's great, honestly. Like it's an incredible way to be in touch with other people, to have these kind of mechanisms. But so much of what people do on there is just sort of reinscribe their affiliations and to get value out of it, you need to try to like dial that down and really take control over what you see.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enduring for me. Well, so Rancid is enduring for me. I will always. Always stand up for let's go You know, so from the era that I was dismissing, metric is the band that I really like, that I look forward to all the new stuff. I revisit their old stuff all the time. I don't know. I haven't thought that much about popular music.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think that is a great, you know, you think back on your life, right? And there's stuff that you listen to because, or I'll say for me, right? Like I think most people, I have a kind of a curve of new music adoption, right? Where there was just a time in my life when I was super into going to see bands. So I was always checking out new things. I was getting into new CDs and just new music that happened to come out in those kind of mid aughts years loomed really, really large in my mind. Then as I become an old person, I stopped going to concerts. I stopped being as on top of new stuff. I have a much longer back catalog to go through. And a lot of that stuff that kind of, I don't even know what you call it, but like mid aughts rock and roll kind of stuff that, you know, white people in their 20s were listening to, I don't think holds up that well and has not going to stand the test of time.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, so I think I am not a literary person on any level. But I think that a certain kind of social realist fiction writing has become unfashionable and that applies to him and his books and also to my grandfather's books.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Makes it weird. It's because America has a rural culture that is In a particular way, Southern and Midwestern. And that kind of northern New England is just different in its own way. It's cut off like spatially from the rest of rural America. It's like tucked away in with Quebec. There's like.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think not a lot of people know about Maine off the coast. You know, interior Maine and the North Maine Woods are really cool and great in a very different way from coastal Maine. A lot of people come up there for the sort of brief visit. They see the rocks. They eat a lobster. And they say, all right, this is okay. And then they come back. But there's a whole main contains multitudes. You got to get to Greenville, Milanocket, see the real weird shit up there.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, so he got in trouble for that gun thing, right? And the other guy in that conflict turned out to be like an actual. Right. But I don't even remember his name. It was like an actual murderer. Who went to jail So, I mean, Gilbert got a raw deal in that.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hillary Putnam, I don't think it is that widely rated at all, but I am definitely a Putnam fan. The pragmatic tradition in American philosophy is good.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underrated I think most people do not pay attention to what the end of anarchy state utopia actually says or to some of his other books. But it's a really deep thinker, and particularly because so few academics are right of center. It is really to people's benefit. I mean, this is probably not like to the specific benefit of the conversations with Tyler audience, but like people should really try to engage these major works like his in a serious way, not with the like, I'm going to get my highlighter pen and debunk this guy. It was one of the great privileges of my life to be, you know, in a small seminar with him and really learn from him. I have obviously not become a Nozick style deontological libertarian.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Employee would do that. And that's just nice, right? And like, that's not America and it's not going to be America. And it's really not going to be one billion Americans America. So I think that level of libertarianism in which we do not expect direct public provision of things to be all that high quality is very much baked into the cake and could become even more so.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in terms of direct public provision of things, right, is one way in which some of the small countries really suggest non-libertarian solutions to problems that I don't think is appropriate for America or would be for the future. My mind was always blown by, I was in Stockholm sometime and I was like super confused by how their city bike share thing worked. And I just like went into the Tibana and I asked someone who worked there, you know, obviously in English, right? Like, so in not in domestic language, I was like, how does this public service that you are not responsible for in any way or work for? Like, how does it function? And she explained it really well to me in a foreign language for no good reason, right? There's like no, I'm sure they have strong unions there, right? There's no reason for her to provide high quality customer service and no American transit agency.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody hates politics, and now all the politicians are unpopular. And we would only kind of go more in that direction. Whereas if you have a homogenous small town, people who don't like it just leave, right? And so you're left behind with a kind of a nice community of people who have a lot in common, who share a lot, who can directly self-monitor each other, who could be really well informed about whether the guy in charge of the fire department knows what he's doing. Probably the right solution is something to do with federalism, but it's definitely a different book as to why American federalism does not deliver on its promise in the way that we might think it should.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, you know, I mean, that's an interesting question, right? I mean, I sometimes think, well, one reason that the governance standouts are small is that there's more variance in the small countries, right? Because there's like a lot of them. So you go around and like there's a couple sort of really nice ones. And there it is, which is different from a causal question, right? Does scaling up make it worse? I think it's probably true though that a billion Americans will be more of a mess in the sense that, you know, people will scan the headlines of the latest in politics and like, oh my God, you know, like what a catastrophe, because it's people who don't know each other, people who don't have anything in common, politicians opportunistically are like trying to create weird new identity cleavages to mobilize people. And it's all very ugly. And like everybody.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hypothetical egalitarian sketch, right? And like we see that women have more desire to have children that most women, like most men, are working class people who are like working for, they have jobs, right? Because like they need to pay the bills and things like that and are not necessarily hyper obsessed with the glass ceiling and who's leaning into what. And people want to have like nice, happy lives with a high standard of living where they can meet their aspirations. And that is 100% in line with some strands of thinking of what's feminism and very much in tension with some others.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, on the other hand, I think we see that when we had larger families, there was less aggregate worrying, right? I mean, that's part of how that went together. So I think it's a little bit of a, I think it's true that if you had exactly 2020 parenting norms, but with an additional child per family, that would have one set of impacts, I think shifting back to slightly more relaxed standard might be healthier for everybody involved. I'm going to try to avoid getting myself canceled with too much speculation as to what's inherent and what sort of sociocultural in terms of the gender difference in interest in parenting. But I mean, I do think it's true that a theme in the book is that we should be thinking about supporting the actual”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have jobs, to be financially independent, to be able to get out of really bad marital situations, that kind of thing get school. The general changes we've seen over the decades where women are now on average better educated than men, where the income gap at the median level is starting to narrow. Like those kind of things, I don't think are meaningfully impacted in a negative way by somewhat larger families.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think that it would. I think in the sense that, well, look, feminism means different things to different people. There's a version of feminism in the United States that is, well, I suppose other countries too, that is extremely focused on the sort of super duper duper high-end elites, right? And I think having larger families is probably bad for women's equality in the top, you know, 0.1% of achievement. If you look at the fact that there are many more male billionaires, right, that having any prospect of like leveling that is probably goes against sort of family things. On the other hand, if you're saying, okay, like the mainstream ways in which feminism impacts most people, right? It's like women's legal and social”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and look, I think back when everybody was debating same-sex marriage, right? Andrew Sullivan, I think, you know, had a kind of a troll take where he was like, how come none of these people talking about the sanctity of marriage are talking about, you know, revisiting no fault divorce? And I think that was actually a good point, right? And, you know, it would be worth looking at. I don't know exactly what the literature on that says or where the trade-off would be or what's even politically plausible. Obviously, if you tell people straight up like, well, we're going to make you miserable, but it has some hazy long-term payoff. That doesn't work in the political system. But I think that's a subject people should think about. I think in so many areas of life, we look back on the 1970s and we say, you know, we maybe made some bad decisions back then. And I don't think we should completely exempt.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting. I don't know exactly how you would discourage divorce in a kind of subsidy structure, but I'm open to it. I don't know. Do you have a white paper on that?”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obama to talk about being a dad, right? That was nice. I think Donald Trump is a poor role model in social and personal life and that we should encourage sort of elite high-profile people to talk about commitment and marriage and why it's valuable, things like that. That's not like a program. I don't think we can make it legally mandatory for people to discuss the benefits of being an involved parent, but I think it's important.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both liberal and conservative people should take marriage incentive impacts on program design more seriously, right? So I think that liberals should admit that this is a real issue and that we should care about it and that you don't need to go like full Jerry Falwell to see that there's an advantage to encouraging people to form stable partnerships. I think conservatives should take their own shit on this a little bit more seriously. And like, yeah, if we have to spend a little bit more money to make this work, like we should do it, right? The important building blocks of society, the important building blocks of free market capitalism don't hinge on the exact spending level on social welfare state programs, I guess, is what I would hope people on the right would appreciate. You know, what else can we do? Public leadership, you know, probably matters. It's probably good for, you know, Barack.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, you know, the book talks about sort of marriage disincentives in welfare state design because that's the sort of boring thing I'm into. And because it's also a real policy lever, right? Like we could change how Medicaid eligibility rules work and how EITC phase in and phase outs work. You know, I think the Bush era stuff, like marriage promotion, like if you could do that, like if that really worked, like that would be amazing. Some people, you know, just like really kind of sneered at it, like, this is absurd. You know, you're going to tell people to get married. It's like a totally good idea. I just, I don't think that they came up with a program that actually did this.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is some. I think probably, I mean, I think probably we say that religiousness is almost constitutive of right-winginess, at least in some definitions. So yeah, I mean, I think a more traditionalist kind of America in some ways would be good.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gonna make connections. That would be really good. Religion bad things have happened by religious people or under religious causes, but generally speaking, it's good when people go to church.”
2020-09-09 · Conversations with Tyler · Matt Yglesias on Why the Population is Too Damn Low · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source